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Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leaves the chamber on Tuesday just after saying that the CIA's improper search of a stand-alone computer network established for Congress has been referred to the Justice Department.
(Associated Press/J. Scott Applewhite)

U.S. Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, teed off on the CIA this week – the latest in a series of dustups
over the spy agency's detention and interrogation program.

Some have called it
the torture program.

Feinstein's
excoriation of the CIA on the floor of the Senate took aim at the agency's top
lawyer, pointing up what she described as his interference with Intelligence
Committee staffers looking into a storehouse of CIA cables on the harsh
interrogations.

The senator's 40-minute
speech ran 4,295 words. But you're in luck. We have boiled down the events
recounted in her comments (and their aftermath) in this chronology:

September
2006: The full U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is
briefed about the program by then-CIA director Michael Hayden. Hours later,
President George Bush discloses the program to the public.

December
2007: A story in The New York Times reveals "the troubling fact that
the CIA had destroyed videotapes of some of the CIA's first interrogations
using so-called enhanced techniques." Hayden later briefs the Intelligence
Committee, saying paper copies of CIA cables detailed records of the interrogations.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, then chairman of the Intelligence Committee, sent
staffers to Langley to review the cables.

Early
2009: Rockefeller's staffers complete their review of the CIA
cables. Feinstein, then chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, describes the
staff report as chilling: "The interrogations and the conditions of
confinement at the CIA detentions sites were far different and far more harsh
than the way the CIA had described them to us."

March
5, 2009: The Senate Intelligence Committee votes 14-1 to begin a
comprehensive review of the CIA's detention and interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Pantetta, who took office in February, agrees to provide a
stand-alone computer system at a leased building (and off the CIA network) for
use by the Intelligence Committee.

Mid-2009
to Early 2010: The CIA makes documents available to
Intelligence Committee staffers, who begin picking through millions of pages.
In early 2010, they notice they have lost access to the documents. They
complain to the CIA, which blames contract information technology (IT)
personnel; later, the CIA says the White House ordered removal of the documents.

May
2010: Feinstein complains to the White House counsel, who
recognizes "the severity of the situation and the great implications of
executive branch personnel interfering with an official congressional
investigation." The White House and CIA agree they will not access the
Intelligence Committee's network or hinder access to documents. The CIA's
director of congressional affairs apologizes on behalf of the agency for
removing the documents.

Sometime
in 2010: A staffer looking through the storehouse of documents
finds an internal analysis of the interrogations. These internal documents,
later known as the Panetta review, acknowledge what Feinstein later calls
"significant CIA wrongdoing. To be clear, the committee staff did not hack
into CIA computers to obtain these documents, as has been suggested in the
press."

December
2012: The Intelligence Committee approves a 6,300-page study on
the CIA's detention and interrogation program and sends the paper to the
executive branch for comment.

June
2013: CIA director John O. Brennan, responding to the report,
says the CIA officially agrees with some of the study, but disagrees and
disputes important parts of it. Some of the disputed parts are included in the
agency's Panetta review, Feinstein says, which "corroborates critical
information ... that the CIA's official response either objects to, denies,
minimizes or ignores."

December
2013:Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., echoes Feinstein's request for
the CIA to provide a complete version of the Panetta review to the Intelligence
Committee, which has seen only a partial copy. The CIA declines to hand it
over.

Jan.
15, 2014: The CIA's Brennan tells Feinstein and
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga. (the Intelligence Committee's vice chairman) that
CIA personnel searched the computers used by committee staffers and accessed
the Panetta review numerous times. The CIA, Brennan tells them, will order a
forensic investigation to learn more about the committee's oversight staff.
News accounts suggest that staffers obtained the document illegally.

Late
January 2014: Feinstein objects to further CIA
investigation, claiming she's concerned the CIA's search may have violated the
Constitution's separation of powers principle. "It may have undermined the
constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of
intelligence activities or any other government function," she will later
note in her floor speech. "I have asked for an apology and a recognition
that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was
inappropriate. I have received neither."

Early
2014: The CIA's inspector general, David Buckley, opens an
investigation of the CIA's search and refers the matter to the Justice
Department for what Feinstein says might be a "criminal violation by CIA
personnel." But the CIA's general counsel turned around and filed a crime
report with federal prosecutors about the actions of the Intelligence Committee
staffers. Feinstein describes this as intimidation by acting general counsel Robert Eatinger, whom she does not name.

March
11: Feinstein says the CIA's acting general counsel was chief
lawyer for the agency's Counterterrorism Center from 2004 until 2009, during
most of the detention and interrogation program. "He is mentioned by name
more than 1,600 times in our study," Feinstein says. "And now, this
individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the
actions of congressional staff. The same congressional staff who researched and
drafted a report that details how CIA officers, including the acting general
counsel himself, provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice
about the program."